X05: Final Fantasy XI: Hands-On

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360's MMO up and running.

By Charles Onyett

We got to take a look at Square's first offering for Microsoft's new console, the massively multiplayer FFXI. Though it's been on the market for a while, FFXI has proven successful and should be a very solid addition to any future 360 playing MMO fan's collection. The game we saw was running on a live server, with lots of chatter and yelling filling up the scroll bar at the bottom. The setup had a keyboard plugged in to the 360 unit to make it easy to respond and ask questions.

Since it's almost impossible to give any sort of real impression of an MMO without at least 10 hours of gameplay, we'll focus mostly on the superficial. We logged into PlayOnline and were plopped into the center of the stone column filled Ru'Lude Gardens where there were plenty of others running around. In the more open and populated areas of the city there was noticeable slowdown, though in tighter quarters this went away. Graphically the game looked very similar to other versions of the game that have been released.

We were able to switch to a first person view by pressing down on the right control stick. Pressing the Y button and then confirming with B allowed you to maximize the chat window so you could see everything that had been recently said in the general, party, and yell channels. The right trigger allowed you to bring up a macro list where you could customize actions like adding players to your party, solo play, and entice.

The left joystick on your controller moves your character around the map, B cancels an action, and X opens the main menu. From the main menu you're able to select an extremely wide range of options from checking your spells and skills to accessing friends lists and world maps.

The character we took into action was a formidable one. He was a level 60 Hume warrior outfitted with some decent equipment. For a weapon he wielded a Tungi Axe which did 41 damage, a Happy Egg which gave an HP bonus of one percent and a wide array of Fighter's clothing. He wore Fighter's Mufflers for gloves which were 15 defense, 13 to HP, four to strength, 10 to shield skill and three to enmity. Also equipped was the Fighter's Calligae for boots, which gave 14 defense, 12 to HP, three to agility, and one to enmity, as well as enhancing the "Double Attack" effect. Stay tuned for when we're able to get some more extended play time with this title and bring you all the details.